Been awhile since I reprinted anything, but I’ve got a big one to make up for lost time. Bruce Jesson is someone that’s probably familiar to the readers of this blog, either as a more historical figure to younger readers or a past collaborator, opponent, comrade, and interlocutor to older readers. Whatever one thinks of the man, his legacy is of a uniquely New Zealand political theorist. Indeed, his distinctly organic and locally developed political thought marks him out not only among Pākehā but among local political thinkers of the left generally. Though, it must be said, once one begins to truly delve into the heritage of the New Zealand left one finds that he was in reality far from alone. Regardless, Jesson was a one of a kind contributor with a fascinating political trajectory which saw him coveted for recruitment by both the Communist Party and the small Trotskyist movement before he set out on his own course as a left nationalist with a theoretical outlook that perhaps rhymed with Maoism but didn’t capitulate to it. He was always a trenchant critic of the socialist left, but never unsympathetic to its cause. In certain respects, I find him admirable even where I disagree with some of his presuppositions.

I’ve decided to both include the three articles together in a single PDF as they were sent to me (thanks, by the way!), for those who want to download the article in some form for their own purposes. You can find it both in a reader and linked below. If I hear back that people find it difficult to read I will include all three articles in full underneath. If you’d like feel free to take the article and do with it as you will. We are all richer for our engagement with those who came before. Anyway, I hope in the future to add more of Jesson’s articles to the works I reprint from old sources, but for now I present the three part series Reconsidering Marxism in full.

Reconsidering Marxism

A Negligible Influence in New Zealand (The Republican #51, August 1984)
Dropping the Leninism from “Marxism-Leninism” (The Republican #53, February 1985)
Reform or Revolution – Is that the Question? (The Republican #56, October 1985)